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User blog:SaddexProductions/Just Cause 3 Full review
Introduction Long time since I was here last. University means you can't prioritize some things at all. I did a small first-impressions review on User talk:GMRE a way back, in which I felt a bit disappointed because I felt Just Cause 2 was the better game. It seems a lot of those grievances I mentioned in that review came from unfamiliarity. After one and a half playthroughs (more on that in the "performance" section) and a total playtime of 60 hours, I think the game is pretty fun, almost as fun as JC2 was when I played it. Below is a more detailed description why it is only "almost". General game mechanics Avalanche mostly did a good job here. Regarding takeovers, they actually made it challenging and funnier to take over bases, because all of the larger bases are very difficult to take over with just a helicopter. I had a criticism in my previous review that the henoius task of collecting Collectable items in Just Cause 2 actually made it more challenging to take over bases, thus it wasn't really a bad mechanic from that perspective, because the smaller bases aka outpoits in JC3 are still way too easy to take over if you have a helicopter. These should have provided somewhat more resistance. The page for SAMs in Medici claims that they are quite easy to avoid, I find it to the contrary - unless you have nitrous (which I also liked that they implemented), the missiles are quite difficult to avoid in a helicopter. Even in a military plane they should still be considered a threat. It provides a good challenge to get into the base to hack them in peace (props for removing the hacking QTE by the way). "Re-oppress" is a very good implementation, which makes the game last longer and also lets you make use of some of the latter gear upgrades. Also, the ability to track chaos objects from the map - damn, that was a much-needed feature. Thanks, Avalance. The game has a good selection of weapons - no complaints so far. I haven't used the planted explosives a lot - I should probably, because you can do a lot of fun things with them, I have seen. Homing grenades are fun to use at least. The wingsuit is fun and a very effective means of transportation that makes the slingshotting in Just Cause 2 look inefficient. No complaints there. Due to the game's tendency to limit the amount of fast travel you can use, it's optimal to use for shorter distances (< 5 km). Dual grappling is fun and works flawlessly. With just a few upgrades a very formidable tool to Rico's disposal. When it comes to heat, I earlier made a complaint that I found it too easy to get rid of heat in Just Cause 3. This is no longer the case. Maybe the heat is a bit too easy gone when you take over police stations? Otherwise the mechanic is way more intelligent than in Just Cause 2, where the way of losing heat basically was "swim under water for two minutes". The possibility to cancel reinforcement calls is one of the reasons for this. The function where destroying sabotage destructible objects instantly gave heat in Just Cause 2 was removed with good and bad consequences though. On one hand, if no one saw you commit the crime, can they be 100% sure it was you, right? On the other hand, it means that city takeovers sometimes provide barely any challenge at all. Also, partly due to a design fault, it also means that you can start destroying a base with a helicopter when you're just out of its range without gaining any heat, because objects are still loaded in at that distance. It's good that the military actually can use tanks during heat now, contrary to Just Cause 2. The game does have a big issue with consistency - this will be adressed in the "story" section. The collectibles are way underprioritized by the game. It's somewhat unclear what the benefits you get from collecting them are in the beginning of the game, so one tends to ignore them most of the time unless they are in the immediate presence. Collecting them should have been more encouraged by the game, although not forced. I barely care about the scoreboard. The system tends to cause more annoyance than satisfaction (Performing online login...). Vehicles The garage mechanic is good to have, even if tend not to use it a lot because I find a lot of good vehicles on the go (also I tend mostly to use military planes and helicopters). The car handling has definitely improved over the last game, as has the plane handling (although it's more complicated now). Find little to no difference in the case of helicopters. As I mentioned, I like that they implemented things like nitrous and boat jumping in the game. Especially nitrous was needed - both of the last Saints Row games had that for example. I haven't checked how many vehicles the game contains, but it seems like a lot and the only type of vehicle I miss are commercial jets (that is part of another issue I will adress in the "world" section). I really like the addition of the U-7 Dravec and its bombs - challenging but still effective way to take over military bases. Also the fact that several military vehicles have homing missiles is nice. Getting rid of the money mechanic for vehicle drops (also applies to weapons) and replacing it with reducable cooldowns was good, because in JC2 this discouraged the player to order those. World One of the main issues I had in my previous review was the feel I got from the game world. Due to the way town takeovers are organised in Just Cause 3, the illusion of variation is busted to an extent, because you realize a lot of things are copy-pasted even if its actually hidden reasonably well at times. This might mostly be caused by the police stations, because they tend to look mostly the same across the board - even if reusing architectural design for buildings of this use actually is a quite reasonable notion in the real world, it tends to break the immersion a bit. I actually think this is less the case when I play now, but the problem is still there. One of my main problems in the beginning was the general feel I got from the game world. While it's way more detailed than the world in the previous game, it somehow felt barren, isolated and empty. Medici does have a very small capital city, does not have an international airport like Panau or San Esperito and does have very few large civiliation settlements in general. During my latest playthrough I realized that this was maybe what Avalance aimed for - small, isolated and in some ways maybe underdeveloped island nation, with little focus on tourism, and more focus on export and full-on militarisation. The wall did contribute a lot to this. It gives a bit of North Korea-esque feel. In contrast, Panau feels like it's well-connected to the world around it, mainly due to that it has an international airport and several large tourist attractions. It feels more like a cross-over between UAE and North Korea. Another difference between Panau and Medici is that it seems in general (with the exception of the Bavarium plot) that the game developers have aimed for a more realistic game world, not to mention the additional of animals like cows and deers - a very welcome addition that helps the immersion a lot. Also that the terrain in general is more detailed with more caves, more lakes and different trees and large waves on the sea (although no running water). The general approach to make the game world more realistic does not come without drawbacks though. This has mainly to do with extremes and the general level of detail. Just Cause 2 tried to hide its lower level of detail and compensate for its extensive use of copy-paste by the addition of a whole bunch of very interesting, sometimes even spectacular locations. This gave the game a James Bond feel overall. In Medici - with the exception of the capital, the Bavarium mines, some bases like Porto Darsena and the two large power stations in the game and maybe a few others, there are very few unique locations in the game. It's good that the developers actually took time and made a short description for most locations, which did good to signal that they weren't just another generic base or town, but most locations aren't really that interesting anyway. They are better designed overall than the JC2 equivalents, but they are still a bit too similar to each other. Overall I like the game world, but the issues are still there. Story and characters Voice acting has improved a lot over the last game, one of its main criticisms. I don't think it's that good, but it's not bad either. It's decent. As for the characters themselves, some of them are good. A few of them seemed a bit underdeveloped though and you ended up not caring about them that much. One of my main criticism of the game as of now is of the story. It's good, or at least decent, until the point when it progresses to Insula Striate. One detail that is critical when it comes to storytelling is pacing, which is what failed badly in the latter part of the game and made it slip into mediocrity. During the first "act", up to the point when Cima Leon: Centcom was destroyed, it was obvious that the writers knew how to correctly pace the story - it's just that they didn't take all three "acts" into account and make the latter two of them different and also more difficult. The pacing failing was a symptom of how the latter missions were designed. The immersion of increasing tension was ruined due to the overuse of the Killing Floor-approach of dealing with enemies - stand down and defend your position from waves of enemies coming at you. By the time of The Watcher on The Wall, I was like "this again?". The The Shatterer of Worlds was supposed to be the turning point of the game. Despite this, it's way too easy to complete, a lot of the reason being that it's pretty much the same mission as the earlier region liberations. This is supposed to be the center of power in Medici. Why does its takeover mission provide just as little resistance as the other ones? The icing on the cake is the last mission, "Son of Medici". When I was flying to the volcano, I expected some hidden fortress or whatnot, something extraordinary. Instead I encounter what's basically a glorified attack helicopter with a shield, and with my Fire Leech, the helicopter came down in minutes. Why? Just why? There are multiple inconsistencies during the story. Why doesn't it seem like anything happened at Costa Del Porto after A Terrible Reaction? The town should logically show signs of damage, it doesn't though. When you first are introduced to the name Rosa Manuela, you wonder, "who is that?". You either get to know that by collecting Di Ravello tapes (see "general mechanics" for the problem with those and other collectibles) or in the next mission. Also why can the pilot in that mission suddenly not fly the plane correctly? The main issue comes from the devs' intent to completely separate the open world mechanics from the story, which led to a loss of consistency. How is it a challenge to destroy the Centcoms as portrayed in the missions when you have already taken them over anyway before? Also if you wanted to do the story in Just Cause 2, you were encouraged to gather Chaos points. That mechanic was actually good, because it actually gave the feel that by destroying bases and doing missions, you were actually destabilising Panau and making the regime angry. The story felt mostly like filler and while the game clearly had a focus on making the story less important than in previous games they could have put some more effort into parts of it. In contrast, the story in JC2, while slightly ridiculous and also inconsistent, was actually well-paced, so it ended up decent in the end. It's not impossible to make a good and consistent story for an open-world game. The Witcher 3 proved that. It did sacrifice a bit of the player freedom, but it was well-worth that. It also handled the town destruction scenario well. In the Blood and Wine expansion (spoiler following), the city of Beauclair is damaged by a vampire attack. After the quest where that happens, the town has damaged buildings that however are repaired after a while. Also, why is the only goal of the rebellion "a fair Medici"? What does that mean, really? In JC2 the factions had specific political motives that were very clear from the beginning. Also why throw out the less significant faction missions? Some of them in JC2 were really good actually, a few might have been the best missions in the game. Random encounters do not serve as worthy replacements. Last thing under scrutiny are the FOW missions. Why did all three of them have to be exactly identical? Gear mods This system is a blast and a disappointment at the same time. The core system with all of its different mods have a lot of potential and should be reused in eventual future games. The mods are many and most of them are quite useful. It's partly ruined by that the missions unlocking gears aren't very fun. Sure, the destruction frenzies, the scrapyard and crash bomb challenges are alright, but the only reason you do them is because you're forced to do so if you want gears. The races are the same as they were in JC2, which means that they are annoying. "Races" usually implies that you are directly competing with other people. Is it that difficult to program some AI to do that? The wingsuit challenges were actually nice though. Performance and port quality The PC port of the game is mostly well-designed, but it sucks that borderless window is missing if you have multiple monitors like I do. You have to force that with a startup command, and it is not really a borderless window anyway, because sometimes when I click anywhere on my other two desktops the game is minimized. Performance is generally good. My current setup utilizes an i7 4790K (4.7 ghz), 32 GB ram and a GTX 1070 (5 % OC) which gives about 70-90 fps at max settings in 1440p, and the game looks very good at the same time. However, AMD users seemed to have some problems with the game, at least in the beginning. Unfortunately the game does have some stability issues. I sometimes get crashes in the end of gear challenges (another reason not to do some of the more boring ones), and have to restart the game. This is made worse by THAT 30 SECOND FUCKING INTRO EVERYTIME THE GAME STARTS, which should have been easy to skip, instead I had to mod the game to get rid of it. Worse still, you can't have a controller plugged in when starting the game, because that will cause a very bad memory leak to occur. Now, Just Cause 2 wasn't much better in this regard. It always crashes when I have decals enabled, and on my previous setup it could crash occasionally even with them disabled (but not very often). Still, it was a more stable game. Here is one big kicker though. Back in November, my 4-year old Sandisk SSD died very suddenly. It wasn't backed up, because aside from the OS almost all of its contents was software only which was easy to reinstall anyway. Unfortunately, I forgot that this game, for some fucking reason best known to Avalance and SQE, doesn't use Steam cloud. Why? Just why? Almost all of my other Steam games either uses Steam cloud - if they don't, they usually have their own cloud sync function (see Uplay and Rockstar Social Club). I lost all of my progress and had to start over. Conclusion There is less filler in the game for sure, and a lot of things have improved, but the devs also threw out some good stuff from the previous game - no, there was no reason really to throw out the less significant faction missions, because some were really good as said. The game is for sure fun, but there was also a lot that could have been done better and it's overall not a better game. Category:Blog posts